Wednesday, 4 January 2017

Jurassic World: disrespecting dinosaurs.

So I’ve finally seen Jurassic World, and I’m disappointed in how they treated the dinosaurs. I’ve always liked dinosaurs, and what I really liked about the first two Jurassic Park movies was that they treated the dinosaurs with respect. In those movies the dinosaurs behaved how I would expect such creatures to behave.

The rot started in Jurassic Park 3. First the pterosaurs - there was no way they could carry off the humans, and even if they could, why would they? Surely they’d be interested in easier prey? Such as fish? And why did the spinosaurus chase everyone all over the island? And why were the raptors so precious over a single egg taken from one of several nests, each full of eggs? When animals lay that number of eggs, they don’t expect them all to survive - so it made no sense for them to get all sentimental over a single egg.

Jurassic World again disrespects the dinosaurs. Why did the pterosaurs and pterodactyls attack the humans? Why didn’t they just fly off? In fact, why did they bother to leave the aviary at all, given that presumably it was safe and full of food?

I didn’t mind that the Jurassic World dinosaurs didn’t have feathers - they kind of covered that and hinted that they bred them to look like everyone expects dinosaurs to look like. (But maybe one day soon we’ll have a movie with feathered dinosaurs.)

I didn’t mind the trained raptors and the impressive (but over-sized) Mosasaur, and the Indominus Rex wasn’t dreadful, but why did it kill all those apatosauruses? For sport?

Mind you, Jurassic World didn’t treat the humans with much more respect. Surely a basic risk assessment would have the park equipped with tranquilliser guns powerful enough to penetrate dinosaur hide? And if you’re going to fit your raptors with head-cams, wouldn’t you also include a tranquilliser in case they turn on you?